Category: Colours

Here at Aston Childcare both my son (34 months old) and one of my mindees (35 months old) are really enjoying learning their colours.

There are lots of chances throughout the day to talk about colours – “Please can you pass me the red one?”,“I want the pink cup” “What colour bib would you like, the pink one or the blue one?”“Which colour pen would you like?” “What colour paper would you like, yellow or green?” etc.

My mindee was quick to learn most colours. Until recently my son was only reliably recognising the colour purple but just this last week he is saying and correctly identifying many more.

We have some fantastic resources that aid colour recognition – Melissa and Dougs sort and snap game is currently very popular. They spent weeks enjoying some fab colour matching puzzles by Orchard Toys. We have lots of books that focus on colours such as “Wow said the owl” and a more simple “colours” book. These colour sorting number bugs are currently proving popular with mindees of all ages. We also make use of some laminated colour sorting cards which the mindees enjoy placing corresponding coloured objects on. I also like to make use of colour themed treasure baskets and colour themed invitations to play.

Finally, whenever we have had fun playing and learning about colours I always reward them with a “I know my colours sticker” which always go down well!

Yesterday after lunch I set out an ‘Invitation to Play’ tray. What is an Invitation to Play? An Invitation to Play is just as it sounds. Inviting your child/children to play with certain materials. The adults job is to provide the collection of materials and the child’s job is to investigate, explore and play with as they like. Invitations to Play should be open ended with no set outcome at the end.

I filled it with lots of yellow items I could find – straws, pom poms pipe cleaners, stencils, paper and our latest batch of yellow playdough.

They both dived straight in –

“I need some pom poms…and some playdough”.

One of them grabbed a pencil and drew around the yellow pot in the playdough…

One wrapped the playdough up in the paper to make a sandwich…

It was really lovely to stand back and watch and listen what they made of it all and their own interpretations on how the items could be used.